Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 144404 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144404 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 722(@200wpm)___ 578(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Myrddin was a true king. He listened to no one and led with fear.
“Hey, you okay?” Casey pulled me out of my dark thoughts.
He was leaning around the corner and I could see his hands were still in latex gloves, so I hadn’t missed the whole thing.
I shook off those dangerous thoughts, though I had no hope they would leave me forever. Until I got out of here, doubt would be my true torture. “I’m fine. Kelsey was dealing with something so I was told I could come here or go back to my room. I’m tired of sitting in my cell.”
Kelsey had said nothing of the kind, but I had to rationalize that she was okay with it since she hadn’t sent anyone storming after me. I supposed having an entire realm that did one’s bidding had its upsides. It meant she didn’t have to watch me the way she had in Frelsi. I could hang all over the Midnight Kingdom and not get into trouble. The house itself was an asshole. When I’d tried to find a way out, I came back to this hallway, the one that led to Casey. Even the fucking house was on his side.
Still, being here was better than being back with Evan asking me all sorts of stupid questions.
Do you remember…
“Oh, okay. I’m about to close up if you want to come back here.” He disappeared again. “It didn’t take too long. Demonic animals usually have fairly simple systems.”
I walked around the corner and sure enough, there was a whole morgue down here. I stopped as Casey stood over the dead hellcat. I gestured around. “Why?”
He ran a stitch to start closing the cat’s torso. “Because I’m hoping what I’ve found can help explain why the creature attacked Gray. I’ve taken a bunch of samples to work with. Maybe you can run Evan through a spell that might help us figure out if he was born here.”
He’d misunderstood. “Not what I was asking. I wanted to know why there’s an ultra-modern morgue right here in what otherwise appears to be Gray’s pleasure palace. I’ve heard there’s a whole dungeon here, and it’s not for prisoners.”
“Ah, well, it’s not usually here. The house is very adaptable,” Casey explained. “I asked for what I needed and now we have a medical wing. When I’m done, it will disappear. The house can expand or shrink as it needs to.”
That was some serious magic. But the spell he’d talked about before wasn’t. It was the kind of thing I could do in my sleep. “You know I could answer that question for you right here and now. The one about where the kitty’s from.”
“Only if I was stupid enough to take your collar off.” This time he didn’t look up, merely kept stitching carefully.
“What did you find out?” I wasn’t going to argue with him. Or try reverse psychology. It wouldn’t work. He knew damn well if I had my powers I would use them to get away.
What he didn’t have to know was that I probably wouldn’t use them to hurt anyone. I’d been thinking a lot about how to minimize the damage when I fled. I would need a story for my master, of course, but I was good at hiding certain things from him.
At least I thought I was.
“I believe it’s been ingesting something that would make it more open to suggestion. There’s some discoloration in his brain that I believe is only explainable by the creature eating an enormous amount of a clover that’s found here in the Midnight Kingdom. They feed it to cattle to make the…transition easier.”
I snorted at his attempts to soften the situation. “You mean before they turn them into Hellburger Helper?”
Casey shrugged. “Something like that. I actually think it’s kind of nice they try to make it easier on the cattle. This cat is a meat eater. He might ingest some grass if he got indigestion, but there’s evidence of him eating far more than normal.”
I watched him move with pure confidence, a deep competence he’d only been beginning to find when we were together. He used to fumble, used to try to play braver than he was. He’d been such a weirdo, and I’d been drawn to him the moment we met.
I’d been without him for so much longer than I’d been with him. Why did he fill my every thought all of the sudden? I didn’t think about Casey all the time. I wasn’t some sad sack, can’t live without a man chick. It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought about Casey, but not like this. Sometimes I’d been able to forget how much I cared.
Because they beat him out of you. They might not have done it with their fists, but it had been a beating all the same. Because they taught you it was wrong to love him. To love anything and anyone except Myrddin Emrys.